Lead (Pb), occurs both naturally and as a pollutant in Arctic landscape systems. The ongoing climate change, especially pronounced in the Arctic, changes the premises for Pb transport and mobility. Thus, to predict future development of both natural and pollution Pb, an increased understanding of their storages and flows in an Arctic system is of interest. Here, a Pb mass-balance budget for an entire catchment in West Greenland was calculated. The budget shows that most Pb is stored in terrestrial soils (94%), while 6% of total catchment Pb is in lake sediments. Other Pb-pools are small in comparison (<1% combined). The entire catchment system has a negative balance, with annual inputs of 44 g Pb from precipitation and 67 g Pb from eolian deposition, while 150 g Pb is removed from the system (through sedimentation). Limited lake water outflow (o.15 g Pb yr-1) suggests that the catchment in its entirety acts as a Pb-sink. The terrestrial system, however (wet deposition input of 34 g Pb and hydrological export of 68 g Pb annually), is considered to be a Pb-source to the aquatic system. The magnitude of hydrological and eolian transport is similar, however the former is more important for pollution Pb transport where the latter is more important for natural Pb. The fate of pollutant Pb is determined by future climate change. Wetter conditions could lead to a prolonged export of Pb further down-stream. If drier conditions prevail, eolian transport will be more important and pollution Pb could stay in soils.

In this thesis, a comparison of three different pre-processing methods for imbalanced classification data, is conducted. Variational Autoencoder, Random Under-Sampling Boosting and a hybrid approach of the two, are applied to three imbalanced classification data sets with different class imbalances. A logistic regression (LR) model is fitted to each pre-processed data set and based on its classification performance, the pre-processing methods are evaluated. All three methods shows indications of different advantages when handling class imbalances. For each pre-processed data, the LR-model has is better at correctly classifying minority class observations, compared to a LR-model fitted to the original class imbalanced data sets. Evaluating the overall classification performance, both VAE and RUSBoost shows improving classification results while the hybrid method performs worse for the moderate class imbalanced data and best for the highly imbalanced data.

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Volatility modelling is a field dominated by classic Econometric methods such as the Nobel Prize winning Autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (ARCH) model. This paper therefore investigates if the field of Deep Learning can live up to the hype and outperform classic Econometrics in forecasting of realized volatility. By letting the Heterogeneous AutoRegressive model of Realized Volatility with multiple jump components (HAR-RV-CJ) represent the Econometric field as benchmark model, we compare its efficiency in forecasting realized volatility to four Deep Learning models. The results of the experiment show that the HAR-RV-CJ performs in line with the four Deep Learning models: Feed Forward Neural Network (FNN), Recurrent Neural Network (RNN), Long Short Term Memory network (LSTM) and Gated Recurrent Unit Network (GRU). Hence, the paper cannot conclude that the field of Deep Learning is superior to classic Econometrics in forecasting of realized volatility.

Syftet med denna studie är att utforska den manliga och kvinnliga blicken i George R.R. Martins fantasinovell, A Game of Thrones (1996). Jag föreslår att skillnader i hur den manliga och kvinnliga blicken betraktar sitt objekt, kan avslöjas genom kritisk analys av kvinnliga huvudkaraktären Sansa Stark. Vidare menar jag att patriarkala strukturer kan synliggöras genom analys av manliga blickar som riktas mot den kvinnliga karaktären. Min analys av Martins fantasinovell har genomförts med hjälp av ett teoretiskt ramverk baserat på framförallt Laura Mulveys artikel Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) och Rachel S. Grates tes ”Love at First Sight? Jane Austen and the Transformative Male Gaze” (2015). Min analys visar att det finns skillnader i hur den kvinnliga och manliga blicken betraktar i sitt objekt. Den kvinnliga blicken tenderar exempelvis att vara mer mångfacetterad i sin värdering av ett objekt. Vidare visar analysen att de manliga blickarna avslöjar patriarkala strukturer.

Background: The global video game industry is today bigger than both the film- and music industry and is subject to a lot of competition. Companies are always looking for alternative ways to reach consumers and buzz is identified as a crucial success factor by many scholars. From real life examples, buzz is shown to have both positive and negative effects. There is however little knowledge about the phenomenon and what role buzz can play in the customer-based brand equity (CBBE) of video game companies. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding about buzz and examine what role it plays in customer-based brand equity for companies within the video game industry. Method: A deductive approach was adopted and in order to fulfil the purpose of the study, a qualitative study (i.e. a case study) was deemed suitable. Interviews were held with five companies within the video game industry. Also, observations were made of how the companies work with their promotion and creation of buzz during the pre-release period. Theoretical framework: The theoretical framework consists of theories regarding the buzz phenomenon and CBBE. These were combined in order to examine the potential role buzz plays in the context of CBBE. Findings: Buzz is shown to play a big role in the video game industry but is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. It is also found that buzz can have a “life of its own” and become unmanageable through speculations. Speculations can lead to higher expectations and pseudo-promises[1], making buzz even more difficult to manage. Regarding CBBE, buzz plays a role in all aspects. However, it is shown to play a different role in the CBBE of video game companies depending on how high the brand loyalty is within that company. The study also results in a conceptual model, illustrating buzz and what role it plays in the CBBE of video game companies both pre-release and post-release.

Maintaining quality in software is a difficult task for several reasons, such as, company growth, time-to-market demands, code complexity and more. GUI testing tools and Continuous Integration (CI) are common practice today to tackle some of the issues with maintaining software quality. However, these techniques bring a set of challenges. Visual Regression Testing (VRT) is a special kind of GUI testing technique focused upon image-based assertions. This study presents an implementation and investigation of the benefits and drawbacks of introducing VRT for a CI environment in an industrial context. Additionally, the thesis investigates factors that need to be considered upon this transition. The results show that benefits are associated with this approach, such as, quicker feedback times and an increase in testing frequency. However, drawbacks and implications were also identified, such as, test maintenance and organizational concerns, indicating careful consideration needs to be taken by an organization before proceeding with an implementation.

This paper analyses the implementation problems of the European Union’s (EU) most comprehensive agreement between Kosovo and the EU, namely, the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) and related them to the democratization process in Kosovo. The SAA aims to strengthen European integration and support Kosovo to fulfill European principles needed in order to become a member in the union. The agreement was signed in 2015 and annual progress reports have been published by the European Commission in order to evaluate the progress and shortcomings. These progress reports show that Kosovo has faced issues while trying to implement the SAA, mostly due to lack of strong democratic principles (judicial independence, public administration, institutions) and corruption. This paper also examines Kosovo’s democratization process since early 1980s in order to evaluate whether issues faced in the implementation of the SAA are related to poor democratization. By applying a case study design, analyzing relevant material and using democratization theory, this paper finds that Kosovo has undergone significant democratization, however, democratic consolidation is at an early stage and the problems faced there are of similar nature as those problems faced in the implementation of the SAA, hence why it is safe to assume that these issues are indeed related to one another.

This study provides an insight into the behavior of foreign institutional investors in Swedish corporate governance matters. We look at the presence of foreign institutional investors on the Swedish nomination committee and their voting power, to show their influence on board independence in Sweden. Collecting data for two years that is 2018 and 2019, from Swedish firms listed on the Swedish stock exchange markets, and analyze the data using the panel regression analysis. The result shows that foreign institutional investors only influence board independence in Sweden when a controlling owner has more than 50 % of the voting right. Also, we show that foreign institutional investors generally have little or no influence on the number of independent directors on Swedish listed firms. However, it is the controlling owners and the board sizes that significantly determine the level of board independence in Sweden. This study concluded that for foreign institutional investors to influence board independence they should participate on the nomination committee.

The overall aim of this thesis is to examine households´ preferences towards relaxing the time demanding aspects of transporting sorted packaging waste. According to welfare economics, households should be willing to pay an amount equal to their reservation wage to benefit from more leisure time. However, specific types of norms, e.g., personal, self-internalized norms, and warm-glow motives may affect this decision. A theoretical model building on the notion that household members prefer to maintain a positive self-image as a responsible person is therefore used. In total 500 surveys were sent out to villas in the municipality of Skellefteå in order to gather information about recycling motives, socio-economic status and time spent on dropping-off packaging waste. The survey also presented a scenario similar to existing curbside recycling schemes in order to examine households’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) to relax the burden of transporting already sorted packaging waste. The empirical results show how both personal norms (giving rise to a feeling of guilty conscious if not recycling) and the warm-glow of giving affect the WTP for responsibility relief. Stronger personal norms implies a higher likelihood that persons have a positive willingness-to-pay for curbside recycling schemes, while strong warm-glow motives instead lead to a lower likelihood. Overall, the average WTP (per hour saved) tends to be lower than the opportunity cost of time measured through the average wage rate after tax. / Denna rapport behandlar hushålls uppfattning gällande att minska tidskrävande transport av redan källsorterade förpackningar i hemmet. Individen borde enligt ekonomisk teori vara villig att betala motsvarande hans/hennes reservationslön för att frigöra ytterligare fritid. Däremot kan specifika normer, såsom personliga (självpålagda) normer, och så kallade ”warm-glow” motiv påverka beslutet. En teoretisk modell som bygger på idén att individer föredrar att upprätthålla en positiv självbild som en ansvarsfull person utnyttjas. 500 enkäter skickades ut till villor inom Skellefteå kommun med uppgift att samla in data gällande motiv till källsortering, socioekonomisk status och tid nedlagd på att transportera källsorterade förpackningar. Ett scenario likt nuvarande implementering av fastighetsnära insamling lades fram för att undersöka hushållens betalningsvilja (WTP) för inte behöva transportera källsorterade förpackningar till en återvinningsstation. Resultaten visar hur både personlig norm (som bland annat ger individen dåligt samvete av att inte källsortera) och motivet ”warm-glow” påverkar WTP för minskat ansvar. En starkare personlig norm medför en högre sannolikhet för en positiv betalningsvilja, medan ett starkt ”warm-glow” motiv i stället leder till en motsvarande lägre sannolikhet. Slutligen, den genomsnittliga betalningsviljan (per sparad timme) tenderar att vara avsevärt lägre än den genomsnittliga lönenivån (efter skatt).